HUG Corner: Thought for the Week - 1/22

Healing After Loss (Martha Whitmore Hickman)

"You could put the meaning of original sin this way: given a choice we would rather sulk than rejoin the party."

- Robert Farrar Capon

"Often with loss, especially if it has been sudden and untimely, we are tempted to dig in our heels at the last moment before the loss occurred. We will resist. We do not consent.

It is a way of trying to hold on to the loved one, the person we knew before tragedy struck. It is also a form of denial. To rejoin life is to accept what has happened. But it is unacceptable. We will hold our breath, living in a suspended state of noncompliance, until the universe relents, changes its mind - or at least apologizes, acknowledging its crime.

This will not happen. It is we who will be bypassed. Better, as soon as possible, to realize that the terms are different know, and begin to live in this changed reality.